Uptime Kuma

Selfhosting is where you're hosting your own websites, apps, software, tools, and much more on your own server instead of having to rely on 3rd-party cloud providers such as Hetzner. Taking this approach to hosting gives you more control over your data and how your server or servers are managed. When you are running multiple things on one or two servers, within your home, it's called a "Homelab" and you're "Homelabbing" at that point. Running your own server and homelab within your home is great for privacy-conscious individuals such as myself, tech enthusiasts, small businesses, and those seeking more control of their digital life. The following lists provided here are applications and software I've gotten comfortable with and enjoyed using over the past 3 and a half years since I started homelabbing, it's based on my experience and what fits my criteria. Some well known softwares won't be listed here, as my experience may of not been at best with them. My criteria is that software is built in the open, respects user privacy and security, should not require a license to operate, and don't contain profanity and other minor things. I'm also willing to test new software to selfhost, feel free to comment or message me to try out other alternatives. There are other places to check out as well for those interesting selfhosting, such as Awesome Selfhosted, selfh.st, and other places you can find on the internet. https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted https://github.com/awesome-foss/awesome-sysadmin https://github.com/veggiemonk/awesome-docker If you ever need help with selfhosting, you can check out the following communities: Homelab Community on Fluxer, I personally run /r/selfhosted (Reddit) /c/selfhosted (Lemmy / Fediverse) There's also a wiki you can look into as well. If you believe an alternative software should be added to this list, please contact me or direct message via my AlternativeTo account. I'm also available on Signal. This lists gets updated every month at least, check back regularly.

This is my personal, actively evolving self-hosted stack. I run my own VPS and prefer tools I can understand, control, and migrate without vendor lock-in. The apps here are ones I actually use (or am seriously testing), chosen for a balance of simplicity, flexibility, and long-term survivability. This list isn’t about “the most powerful” tools — just what works for me. I update it as my setup grows and my opinions sharpen!

Five production-ready open-source apps that replace Zapier (n8n), Google Analytics (Umami), UptimeRobot (Uptime Kuma), 1Password (Vaultwarden) and Google Drive (Nextcloud). All five run in Docker on a single $4/month VPS. Deploy guides, docker-compose files and RAM sizing for each one are documented on SelfHostStack.